Ship tracks in the Irish Sea

Figure 1

Some good ship tracks in the sea fog visible in the latest satellite images of the Irish and Celtic sea this morning (fig 1), well they certainly look like ship tracks to me, even if R S Scorer thought that there were a rare phenomenon back in 1967. Perhaps the increase in size of these massive ULCV container carrying ships has something to do with it? Any light breeze hitting the side of one of these monster ships (fig 2) could only really go up I would have thought, and carve some kind of furrow though the fog.

Figure 2 – The Vasco de Gama which ran aground of Southampton on the 22 of August 2016 – Courtesy of Maritime Photographic

In a midday visual satellite image from NASA (fig 2), it appears that the Holyhead to Dublin ferry may have left a ship trail, although it looks like it may have drifted a little in what breeze there is across the Irish Sea (fig 3 & 4)